Angel Trains Migrates to Claremont Cloud

Angel Trains is one of Britain’s leading train leasing companies and has been an owner and lessor of rolling stock since 1994. The company leases to 18 franchised operators and two open access operators in the UK.

Claremont’s proactive and personal approach helped make the initial transition as smooth as possible but just as importantly, we’re highly satisfied with their service and ongoing support.

Andy Wren

Head of IT Services, Angel Trains Limited

Background

Angel Trains supplies major train operating companies with the vehicles they need to run their services. They own over 4,321 vehicles, 34% of the nation’s rail stock, to carry 1.6 million passengers every day across the UK rail network.

The company has a vast amount of data it needs to manage and uses Oracle BI Applications, Oracle Data Integrator (“ODI”) and Hyperion to aggregate and report on business critical information. Angel Trains also depends on Oracle E-Business Suite to manage its complex financial processes.

The Business Challenge

Angel Trains had always hosted its Oracle technology with a major Oracle hosting provider but were dissatisfied with the impersonal, unresponsive and increasingly expensive service.

The business had limited access to its own Oracle systems, which made it difficult to manage them effectively. Collaborating with the hosting partner was also challenging since both their service and delivery teams were based offshore.

Angel Trains was eager to work with an approachable, more flexible hosting provider who could respond to and resolve issues much more quickly.

Since Angel Trains had a wide variety of Oracle technology that would need to be migrated and supported, it was vital that they work with an experienced partner with genuine Oracle expertise. Security was also key. The business needed to transfer all of its systems across into a secure, but scalable, environment – risk and hassle free.

The Solution

Claremont was selected for our personal approach to delivery, proven quality of service and competitive price. Recognised for providing agility, scalability, as well as the highest security, it was decided that Claremont Cloud would be the best new hosting environment for the business.

Claremont Cloud is unique: an Oracle-powered Cloud platform, built using Oracle VM and Oracle Linux to deliver a pure Oracle stack, wholly delivered from UK data centres within a true Managed Services framework. This provided the perfect platform on which Angel Trains could run all of its many Oracle applications – making its systems much easier to access and manage. Our UK data centres and UK-based consultants and Service Managers also appealed to Angel Trains who were looking to work with a local Cloud hosting service team.

Claremont’s well-established migration methodology and rigorous frameworks were employed to transition each of the business’ Oracle systems to Claremont’s Cloud hosting.

First we took exact copies of the existing systems and kept them synchronised during the migration project. After performing several rounds of stringent testing – in collaboration with Angel Trains – we migrated each of the systems to the Claremont Cloud.

Moving multiple business critical systems at once is a complex process that requires meticulous planning, testing and execution. But rigour must also be met with agility.

Having transitioned the systems to Claremont Cloud in May 2016, we now provide Angel Trains with a hands-on hosting and support service for Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle BI Applications, ODI and Hyperion. In addition to Oracle DBA & technology support, we also provide Oracle E-Business Suite functional and technical support.

The Business Benefits

Angel Trains now benefit from a secure Cloud hosting environment, with accessible UK-based data centres, and agile and proactive support from an expert team of consultants. Since engaging Claremont, Angel Trains has gained:

A protected, UK-based Cloud hosting environment built on a pure Oracle platform

More information

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